In a closed retail environment, such as a standalone shop, stadium, shopping mall, or airport for example, customers can typically purchase items from different stores or concessions stands. Thus, buying decisions are often made based on customer convenience. For example, the further away a customer is from a product, the less likely the customer may be to become aware of the product, and thus the less likely the customer is to purchase the product. Models exist that allow customers to order goods from a remote location, and thus the remote location may be referred to as an order fulfillment location. As used herein, a remote location may refer to any location that is not physically proximate to a given customer. By way of example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,945,477 and 6,473,739 describe systems in which patrons can order from a tablet ordering device. In the aforementioned systems, it appears that a user must authenticate into the system and remain assigned to a device through an account, which requires several steps for the customer. An additional drawback of these systems appears to be that users are tied to their assigned device, and thus users cannot move freely between devices.
In a fast-paced environment, such as an airport or stadium for example, customers often lack time to go through numerous steps to buy products remotely. Requiring user accounts, pre-arranging payments, and/or escrowing payments can be barriers to making purchases. Existing approaches to remote ordering also often require large amounts of operational setup, such as, for example, hardcoded device identification, authentication, user account setup, and device and customer location determination. Further, existing systems often do not address challenges associated with fulfilling orders remotely in an enterprise environment that includes shared resources. Thus, existing remote ordering and ordering fulfillment systems lack efficiencies and capabilities.